Monday, November 25, 2002

Sister Santa Basilio was doing church work in her native Mexico a few years ago when she noticed that many of the little villages in the Sierras were becoming ghost towns. That was because most of the young people, she said, had left their country to find work in the United States. Sister Basilio says she is now “very happy” to be helping a few of the men who left those villages. Today, she is one of three Mexican nuns working with Hispanics in Northeast Tennessee. Sister Basilio, Sister Maria Lina Ramos and Sister Leticia Rojos travel to parishes in what officials of the Catholic Church have designated as the “Five Rivers” district to spread the word of God to its Spanish-speaking population. ....Sister Basilio described her mission as one to “help preserve the faith of the Hispanic people” while they are living and working in the United States. Expanding on that point, Sister Ramos said the goal of their order is to “bring the faith of Jesus” to where he is not known, and to help people “maintain their faith in places where they know Christ.”